Press-Register file photoTraffic on the Beach Express toll bridge is on pace to decline for the third straight year. That's bad news for Orange Beach taxpayers, who are bound to a revenue sharing pact with the span's owners.ORANGE BEACH, Ala. -- Traffic on the Beach Express toll bridge is on pace to fall for the third straight year, putting the city's taxpayers in a pinch and forcing them to borrow millions of dollars to meet their obligations in a revenue-sharing pact with the span's owners.

Nearly 250,000 cars would have to cross the Intracoastal Waterway this month to meet last year's traffic count of 2.5 million. But more importantly, it would take more than a million trips -- the equivalent of three busy summer months plus one December -- to generate the returns the city needs to match the $1.2 million it pays the owners each January.

There's no hope of seeing that kind of traffic: 145,000 crossings is a typical December. So the City Council this month agreed to enlarge the credit line it uses to finance its end of the deal from $5 million to $7.5 million.

"We're crossing our fingers," Finance Director Clara Myers told council members Tuesday. "We may not have asked for enough."

In 2004 the city entered a 60-year pact with the group that built the bridge, a partnership that included gubernatorial candidate Tim James and his brothers. For $12 million, paid in 10 annual installments, Orange Beach would receive a royalty for every car that crossed the span.

During the deal's first decade the city's take depends on how many cars use the bridge. If less than 2 million vehicles cross, the city gets 10 cents for each one. The royalty escalates to 21 cents for traffic counts between 2 million and 3 million, which will be the rate this year -- just as it has been all but one of the first five years of the arrangement.

Between 3 million and 4 million cars bumps the rate to 36 cents per car and any total exceeding 4 million pays 46 cents per car. It takes 3,333,334 vehicles under those terms for Orange Beach to break even on its annual $1.2 million payment. That happened once, in 2006, when 3,376,211 cars used the bridge.

Eventually the arrangement should pay off for the city. From 2014 to 2064, taxpayers, with no further obligation to the bridge's owners, will collect 25 cents for every car that crosses the span.

But until then the deal has put a strain on the city's finances. To date, Orange Beach has paid the bridge owners $7.2 million while collecting slightly more than $3.8 million in royalties.

After striking the deal with Orange Beach, James and his partners sold the bridge for about $70 million to an Australian bank, which then bundled the Beach Express with three other Alabama toll roads in a sale to a subsidiary of the multibillion dollar Alinda Infrastructure Fund.

Early next year, two things will happen. The bridge's current owners, American Roads LLC, will pay the city for December traffic and reconcile the difference between the 21-cent rate and the 10 cents it pays throughout the year. Orange Beach, meanwhile, will write its next $1.2 million check. The accounting will then look something like this: American Roads: $8.4 million; Orange Beach: $4.3 million.

When municipal leaders were negotiating the deal in 2003, they were guided by the assumption that traffic would steadily increase, eventually yielding enough, if not more, than they needed each year for the $1.2 million obligation. With that in mind they secured a $5 million credit line from Vision Bank.

Those assumptions proved faulty. As of Dec. 10, the credit line had dwindled to $776,000. And with the December payments and reconciliation on pace to amount to less than $250,000, the city had to ask the bank for more money.

A bit of good news for taxpayers: Orange Beach, which has so far paid $851,299 in interest on the credit line, will see its rate lowered from 4 percent to 3 percent under terms of the new $7.5 million loan.

City officials say that while summer traffic counts, attributable to tourists, are strong, off-season use has plummeted. Part of that can be blamed on the near shutdown of the city's construction industry, which drew not only workers but deliveries and equipment over the bridge every day, said City Administrator Ken Grimes.

There's also strong evidence to suggest that American Roads' March 2007 toll hike caused some regular users to skirt the now $3 fee by using the Ala. 59 bridge a few miles to the east.

American Roads Chief Executive Officer Neal Belitsky said in an e-mail that traffic on the Beach Express and the company's other Alabama toll roads has simply "followed national economic and road travel trends." The company has rejected Orange Beach's pleas to reduce the toll to its original $2. But Belitsky said American Roads has regularly rolled out promotions, like short-term memberships for tourists and temporary residents, and discounts to generate traffic.